Royal Society frees up journal archive | Nature News Blog
►http://blogs.nature.com/news/2011/10/royal_society_frees_up_journal_1.html
Ben Franklin’s account of his electric kite experiment (1752) and Isaac Newton’s first ever paper (1672) are among 60,000 historical scientific papers now freely accessible online, after Britain’s Royal Society opened up its journal archive.
The archive goes all the way back to 1665, when Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society first appeared – probably the world’s first peer-reviewed scientific journal. It’s now fully searchable, and all papers published more than 70 years ago are free to view. (You’ll still have to pay for the newer ones). The BBC picks out some weird and wonderful papers, including the woman who swallowed a bullet (in 1668), and an experimental canine blood transfusion (1666).
#histoire #science #numérisation #archives #internet
As digitization of print works gets easier and cheaper, “we do not feel it is justifiable to continue charging for access [to out-of-copyright material]”, Taylor said. The Royal Society’s pay-per-view income for the entire archive (including papers after 1941) amounts to less than 0.5% of their total publishing revenues.
